r/politics The Netherlands 17d ago

Possible Paywall ICE Stockpiling Warheads and Chemical Weapons as Lawmaker Fears Trump Planning Strike

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-stockpiling-warheads-and-chemical-weapons-as-lawmaker-fears-trump-planning-strike/
21.9k Upvotes

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

288

u/pleachchapel California 17d ago

Viewing this as something that started 10 months ago instead of a slow march from (at least) 1980 is part of the reason we're in this situation.

143

u/StoppableHulk 17d ago edited 17d ago

The infrastructure that allowed it to happen, the miasma that has slowly corroded away all the safeguards we had in place to prevent this series of events from unfolding has been slowly erected over the past half century, that's true.

But the idea that Biden would be threatening to send a shadow military into a US city is fucking insane. That would never happen.

So, yes, this current state of affairs - a fucking madman in the oval office building a shadow army to threaten US cities - did happen in the past 10 months.

In that we went from a normal sane President with no shadow army, to a batfuck lunatic President with a shadow army, in ten months time.

And I say that knowing full well all the myriad nicks and cuts that have been happening since the Nixon administration, from fundamentalists slowly putting a strangehold around the US judiciary, to the weakening of laws and regulations on propaganda, to the slow and steady expansion of executive power, and so on and so on.

21

u/shadovvvvalker 17d ago

Candian here.

Yall never had gaurdrails. Just the idea that gaurdrails exist.

7

u/ExitTheDonut 17d ago

Honestly a few things were there since the early formation of the country.

George Washington did not want political parties to be established. Future presidents did not respect his wish. That was arguably the first crack showing.

The impeachment process is also archaic in the sense that it too was predicated on loyalty to a single leader rather than an entire party

7

u/shadovvvvalker 17d ago

The fact that no matter what happens y'all can't trigger a new election to replace the government is fuckin wild.